


Couldn't Get That Boy To Kill Me

by redbrunja



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Brainwashing, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Red Room, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:46:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/pseuds/redbrunja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes she thinks she should have forced Barton to put her down. After all, death clears all debts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Couldn't Get That Boy To Kill Me

Her right knee is dislocated, three ribs broken, wrist sprained. There's blood dripping into her eyes, sweat stinging at her cuts, and she's out of bullets. He's panting, faced bruised to hell and back, the left leg of his fatigues glistening with blood, black on black, and he has an arrow pointed at her forehead.  
  
 _Kill me,_  she thinks, empty gun trained right between his eyes.  
  
She is so tired.  
  
He lowers his weapon.  
  
Natasha hates him for that for  _years_.  
  
During her intake, with SHIELD combing through her mind and testing her body, she thinks she should have forced the issue, fought Barton until he put her down. She would have deserved it. Death clears all debts. But Natasha has never been one to take the easy way out. Dying wouldn't wipe out the red in her ledger.  
  
Four months after he brought her in, they spar, and Natasha beats him bloody. SHIELD is beginning to trust her at this point. She's passed their psych evals, she's played nice, she's gone on some milk runs and some challenging missions, given them success after success to tally.  
  
Barton shows up, a third of a year spent watching goats wander from Ethiopia into the Sudan and back again, his punishment for bringing her in with her heart still beating. He has desert dust on his boots, a sunburn peeling across the bridge of his nose, a lazy grin, and he wants to spar with her.  
  
Her mouth tastes like copper.  
  
"So the boredom didn't kill you?" Natasha asks, stretching out her hamstrings, her body a sinuous, enticing curve. Barton bounces on his toes, barely glances at her.  
  
"Nah," he says, casual, light, as he follows her onto the mat.  
  
And she played nice, she was a good little asset, but Baron is acting like she's a  _friend_ , like she's something besides a broken doll he didn't have the balls to terminate.  
  
"Could use a good workout, though," he says consideringly.  
  
Natasha's hands are already tight fists when she gives Barton the subtle, seductive smile that has lured many, many men into spilling secrets and following her into dark places.  
  
"I'll see what I can do," she promises and has him laid out and bleeding in under a minute.  
  
Natasha doesn't hold back and she doesn't waste time. She comes at him with every scrap of her strength and her training and her grace and her skill. She kicks his legs out from under him, hammers a kick into his side and he's falling. When he hits the mat, she's on top of him. He gets in a nice elbow right into her cheekbone that causes her vision to blur for a millisecond, goes for a one-handed choke. She takes his wrist, bends it back and pins his arm to the floor. She punches him with her opposite hand, hard enough that several things crack. She hits him again, feeling the blow sing up her arm and then she's off the mat, across the room, feeling distant satisfaction but mostly nothing at all. Her knuckles are bleeding, her lip is split.  
  
Her breath is coming hard.  
  
"Romanoff," he calls, right as her hand touches the locker room door. "Romanoff!"  
  
She pauses, licks the blood off her mouth, and then turns to look at him.  
  
Barton's sitting up, looking annoyed. He swipes his arm under his nose, wipes away blood.  
  
He's tougher than she expects.  
  
"You're buying the drinks tonight," he says and whatever he sees -or thinks he sees - in her face makes his annoyance shift to amusement. The corner of his mouth tips up and Natasha's stomach roils.  
  
SHIELD begins to send them on missions together, and they're fantastic.  
  
Natasha has worked with partners before but she doesn't remember it being like this, this mix of seamless teamwork and annoyance at Barton's inability to keep the radio chatter to relevant observations. He asks her personal questions and speculates about the people he's watching and she's winding around her fingers and Natasha finds it irritating at the same time it makes the ops seem to last moments instead of days. And the times they're able to fight together? When SHIELD tells them to go in hot and expects nothing but rubble in their wake?  
  
It's like dancing.  
  
SHEILD sends Strike Team Delta into situations with bad odds and gaps in intel and suspect allies and she and Barton come back bloody and bruised and victorious.  
  
Penance should not feel like this.  
  
She fucks him after one of their ops.  
  
Just shows up at the door of his quarters.  
  
"Come in," he says, surprised, and before the door's finished closing she's peeling off her uniform.  
  
Barton doesn't hesitate. He reaches for her, swings her around into a kiss, and she lets him lead on that, lets him kiss her nice and soft while she unbuckles his belt, unzips his pants.  
  
He groans when she touches him, this aching, desperate sound that she knows well. She can't remember all the men she's made sound like that. She runs her thumb over the head of his cock and he shudders, thrusts into her touch for several long minutes before he pulls her hands away.  
  
He leads her to his bed, kicking off his pants, boxers, yanking his t-shirt over his head like it has personally offended him. He sits, tugs her into his lap, and goes back to kissing her. He seems content with that for a ridiculously long time. He kisses her until her lips are tingling, numb, stroking the tangled curls of her hair, and then he nibbles at the line of her throat, laves his tongue across her nipples until she's wet and squirming in his lap.  
  
That wasn't the plan; she pushes his shoulders down on to the bed, digs her nails in a little.  
  
He pushes his hips up against her with a groan. He reaches for the set of drawers beside his bed, retrieving a condom without looking away from her. Nat eases back a little on his thighs, plays with herself. She arches her back, lets her head loll back, one long elegant line, drawing Barton's eyes from her neck to her breasts to where she's stroking the folds of her cunt.  
  
"Jesus," he breaths, staring at her, hands frozen in the process of tearing the package open. He keeps flicking his bright blue eyes from where she's fingering herself to her face and back again. When she touches something particularly pleasant, an unplanned gasp rising to her lips, Barton's gaze is fixed on her face.  
  
"Again. Do that again," he commands, reaching up to cup the back of her neck with one hand.  
  
Natasha doesn't.  
  
She takes the condom out of his other hand, rolls it over his cock. She strokes him a few times, his eyes closing as he lifts his hips.  
  
She mounts him, don't let her face reveal the pleasure she's feeling, and he does feel so good inside her, hard and thick and when he bucks his hips, thrusts into her, he hits something sweet almost immediately.  
  
 _Son of a bitch,_  she thinks as he pulls gently on her arms, tries to ease her down closer to him.  
  
Natasha shakes her head, leans back, drives him deep. That almost sends her over the edge. A few additional strokes with the first two fingers of her left hand and she's coming, fast.  
  
Barton fucks her through it, hands steady on her hips, telling her how lovely she is, how good she feels, his voice rough and she has the sudden desire to stay, to revise her plan and let this play out a different way. She imagines him taking her from behind, his mouth right next to her ear, feeling his breath hot on her skin while he talks, his callused fingers working her clit, instead of her own.  
  
She shoves that desire away, gives herself a dozen more thrusts, just enough to steady her breath and memorize exactly way his cock feels, just enough to make Barton's breath come hard, and then she reaches between them, wraps her fingers around the base of his cock. She makes sure the condom is secure and rises. His hands tighten on her hips for one instant and then she's turning away. Her stupid, craven body misses his presence immediately. She's not watching his face but she sees him force his hands into fists, bring them down to his sides.  
  
It feels like she's been hollowed out as she rises to her feet and steps off his bed. She ignores it, going to tug on her uniform, yanking it harshly when it sticks against her sweat-damp skin.  
  
She listens to the stunned silence behind her with less enjoyment than she'd expected.  
  
Then Barton laughs. She hears him flop back against the bed and just laugh.  
  
"Darling, you are," he says, and can't seem to finish his thought.  
  
She walks to the door, pauses. She wants to hear him finish his sentence, wants to hear him admit that what they both know she is.  
  
Red Room tech ends up before offered to the highest bidder and SHIELD sends Strike Team Delta after it. It's being sold by a wealthy, violent, and politically connected warlord. Their orders are to be fast, efficient, and successful. Natasha would prefer to burn the entire place down but she can do just as much damage with a scalpel as she can a sword. She's already decided that SHEILD is going to get an insignificant amount of usable technology from this mission, and judging by the fact that Barton (discreetly) checked that she was bringing a backpack bearing C4 and packed two extra quivers of explosive-tipped arrows, they were one the same page.  
  
Natasha thought that she'd had anticipation and anxiety trained out of her but she flies the quinjet like she's being clocked and it takes every scrap of her self control not to chew at her lip. She spends half of the flight fantasying about nervous habits she doesn't indulge in and the other snapping at Barton's stupid comments.  
  
She's almost relaxed by the time she hands the plane's controls over to Barton and finishes suiting up.  
  
The mission goes exactly to plan until Natasha loses nineteen minutes from 02:37 a.m to 02:56 a.m.  
  
She comes back to herself ripping electrodes off her wrists, off her forehead. There are three corpses on the floor and another woman in her head. The other woman is also a SHIELD agent, her sibling dead due to a superior's negligence, and the entire focus of her personality is set on bringing SHIELD down.  
  
It's sloppy work.  
  
To clean, too simplistic. Natasha takes a deep breath, shoves the woman into a box in her mind, where she keeps all the other women she'd been at once been.  
  
"Sloppy," she says again. If they wanted to turn her, they should have tried harder. Shoving a hastily constructed personality into her head is just insulting. Natasha notices her comm in a tray next to her weapons. She replaces it in her ear, checks her Glocks.  
  
"......Nat, you there? Romanoff if you don't fucking–" Barton's voice sounds raw.  
  
"Affirmative," she says. There's a beat and in the slightly staticky silence, she knows that Barton is reining himself back. She is not going to get a moment of peace on the flight back, she can already tell. He's probably still going to be bringing this mission up and chewing her out about it for the next six months. Natasha feels sick and unsteady enough, even as she checks that her combat knife is still in her boot, that she's kind of looking forward to that.  
  
"Is Dr. Morozov still in the building?" she asks, counting how many bullets she had left. Enough.  
  
"He's currently failing to make a quick exit," Barton answers instantly. "Fifth floor, second room to the right of the stairwell.  
  
She nods, even though Barton couldn't see her. "There's been a change in plans," she says, sliding the magazine home. "Please let Dr. Morozov know I want a word."  
  
Dr. Morozov is waiting for her on the fifth floor with arrows through his knees and his wrist, pinned to the floor like a gift.  
  
He starts begging for mercy the minute Natasha opens the door.  
  
Natasha has been many different women; none of them were merciful.  
  
Almost six hours later, Clint puts the Quinjet on autopilot and they fuck on the floor.  
  
After they finish demolition on the compound, Natasha lets Clint handle take-off. She's in the back, reloading her guns. She's moving slowly, methodically. The adrenaline is fading away in little hiccupping swirls and she keeps her hands steady and her face blank to prove that she can. She literally cannot summon up a scrap of anxiety regarding what SHIELD's reaction is going to be. SHIELD plays too nicely with its allies to make Natasha concerned about their reaction; and considering how annoyed Deputy Director Hill was at being asked to use kid gloves with a power-hungry, mercenary sociopath, Natasha suspects that their punishment is going to involve a long, boring surveillance mission in the tropics.  
  
She hears the distinctive beeps that signal the autopilot engaging.  
  
She is not in the mood of one of Clint's sarcastic lectures.  
  
His boots are loud on the grating.  
  
He surprises her though. He doesn't say a word, crowds her back against the bulkhead, takes her chin in his hand.  
  
Her hands are gripping the edge of his flak jacket; she hadn't given them permission to do that.  
  
Clint's breathing hard.  
  
"Next time, don't tell me to wait," he says.  
  
Natasha has no memory of doing so. She nods, wishes she hadn't attempted to pretend that she was going to follow SHIELD's orders with regards to Red Room tech. If she'd gone in with Barton in the beginning.... She has cleared buildings with Barton at her side before, and it is bloody and efficient and fun.  
  
Clint's serious expression doesn't change. He lets go of her chin, touches her neck. She moves into the touch, goes up on her toes. She licks at the bend of his jaw, tastes sweat and dirt, sucks a bruise into the side of his neck.  
  
Barton holds himself perfectly still for one long moment, pulse hammering under her mouth, and then he moves. He buries his hands in her hair, pulls her head back, and kisses her like he's  _furious_. His teeth rake her bottom lip and she moans into his mouth.  
  
Clint boosts her up, and she wraps her legs around his waist, unfastens her gun belt, letting it dangle from one hand while she tries to shove his coat off his shoulders. He sets her down when they reach the rear of the plane and there's a minute where they're both just efficiently stripping. Natasha puts her Glocks on the nearest bench, keeping them close. She toes off her boots while she unfastens her knife holsters. Clint kneels down, unlaces his boots, and then sets his sidearm next to hers. He kicks off his boots, shrugs out of his jacket, and unbuckles his belt while reaching up into one of the overhead compartments for his go bag. She pauses, watches the muscles of his back play under his shirt. Clint dumps half of his duffle on the floor with a clatter, making sure there's a condom in easy reach.  
  
He catches her eye, stills. Natasha steps close, runs her fingers along the waistband of his pants. She flicks the button of his fly open, doesn't go any further. She curls her fingers in the soft fabric of his t-shirt, slowly pulls it up. Clint obediently lifts his arms while she pulls it off. She touches him, slowly, lets herself savor the feel of warm skin under her fingers. She circles his nipples, caresses his scars. She keeps her eyes fixed on his body but she knows that he's watching her face. She has no idea what he sees there.  
  
Clint's touching her as well, peeling her suit away, tracing the line of her collarbone, running his hands along the curve of her waist. He thumbs her nipples, his calluses and scars as rough as a cat's tongue, and Natasha doesn't think to hide her pleased shudder.  
  
He finishes unfastening his pants, lets them fall away. Barton understands ledgers and debts and retribution, so Natasha half expects him to get her on her back, to jack into her, quick and fast, pay her back for the last time that they did this.  
  
Natasha isn't unwilling.  
  
Instead, he gets his back to a wall, slides down, pulling her into his lap. He's hard against her belly, the tip of his cock sticky with precome. He laves her nipples with his tongue, his calloused fingers stroking up and down her spine. He cups the back of her neck and pulls her head down, kisses her and kisses her and kisses her, like he has all the time in the world and wants only this.  
  
By the time he rolls her onto her back, she's embarrassingly wet for him, her breath coming fast. The cold decking makes her hiss in a breath and press her tits against his chest, dig her nails into his shoulders. He mumbles something soothing and incompressible against the line of her throat as he puts on a condom, presses into her. She wraps her legs around him, digs her heels into his back, urging him on, making little pleading sounds in the very back of her throat. He feels so good inside her.  
  
Clint just moves slower, his thrusts almost lazy, watching every flicker of pleasure that crosses her face, ducking his head lower to lick at the hinge of her jaw.  
  
Her orgasm is slow and sweet, and when it's over, Natasha crosses her ankles behind Clint's back, tightens. She bites the lobe of his ear, playful, presses her tits against his chest, enjoying his weight on her, the press of the cool decking against her back, his cock hard inside her. He swears when his orgasm hits, hips bucking frantically against hers and then shudders through the end of it. She pets the sweat-damp hair at the back of his neck soothingly. He closes his eyes at her touch, drops his forehead to her shoulder.  
  
"Glad you're back," Clint says.  
  
"It has its merits," she agrees.  
  
While they're getting dressed, Clint takes an extra moment to straighten her collar for her, zip her suit closed. At the end of the gesture, he pulls his hand away a little too quickly, like that one action revealed too much. Natasha responds by fisting her hand in his hair, kissing him. She starts out hard, possessive, then lets the kiss soften. She kisses him like he deserves to be kissed and then goes to finish arming herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Much love to qualapec, who went above and beyond the call of duty beta-ing this for me.


End file.
